Book 13
25
"But above all in Homer there is a brilliant heaping up of the same idea and thought, in these lines: Iliad xi. 163. Zeus from the weapons, from the dust and blood, From carnage, from the tumult Hector bore. Also in another verse: Odyss. xi. 612. Engagements, battles, carnage, deaths of men. For although all those numerous synonymous terms mean nothing more than 'battle,' yet the varied aspects of this concept are elegantly and charmingly depicted by the use of several different words. And in the same poet this one thought is repeated with admirable effect by the use of two words; for Idaeus, when he interrupted the armed contest of Hector and Ajax, addressed them thus: Iliad vii. 279. No longer fight, dear youths, nor still contend, and in this verse it ought not to be supposed that the second word, meaning the same as the first, was added and lugged in without reason, merely to fill out the metre; for that is utterly silly and false. But while he gently and calmly chided the obstinate fierceness and love of battle in two youths burning with a desire for glory, he emphasized and impressed upon them the atrocity of the act and the sin of their insistence by adding one word to another; and that double form of address made his admonition more impressive. Nor ought the following repetition of the same thought to seem any more weak and cold: Odyss. xx. 241. With death the suitors threatened, and with fate, Telemachus, because he said the same thing twice in qa/naton (death) and mo/ron (fate); for the heinousness of attempting so cruel and unjust a murder is deplored by the admirable repetition of the word meaning 'death.' Who too is of so dull a mind as not to understand that in Iliad ii. 8. Away, begone, dire dream, and Iliad viii. 399. Away, begone, swift Iris, two words of the same meaning are not used to no purpose, e)k parallh/lwn, 'as the repetition of two similar words,' as some think, but are a vigorous exhortation to the swiftness which is enjoined?"
